Resurrection of my CQ20V

[steve briance]

Great save with subframe bolt. Massive sense of relief i imagine.

[Bowie69]

....and so onto the third job, I mentioned earlier that one of the front subframe bolts had gone 'soft' on me. It was a new bolt, and I managed to snug it in there with a gob of loctite to hole it there, but I knew it needed addressing, as it wouldn't torque up to spec.

So, whipped the bolt out (two turns and it fell out....), and then pried apart the polybush, removing the inner sleeve. My plan here was to 'upgrade' to M12 bolts, essentially as per the later S2s, it would save cutting a hole in my chassis leg, something I really, really didn't want to do.

The bolts are M12x1.5, (so metric FINE, coarse is 1.75 for M12), meaning I needed to make my M10 sleeve suit an M12 bolt.

Time to break out the pillar drill, and a 12mm drill bit:

20220304_133925.jpg
I expected these to be TOUGH, I though they were stainless, but perhaps just low-grade stuff, it cut quite well, evidenced by the chip size you can see on the vice.

After drilling, I chamfered the edge a little with a large step drill, just for niceness:

20220304_134035.jpg

Now the potentially risky part, tapping a new hole. Above I say that the bolts are M12x1.5, meaning we need to drill a 10.5mm hole up into the captive nut in the chassis. As it was already also M10 (with most of the threads stripped out), I started there, and ran a 10mm drill up through it, this worked fine, I only had an old mains drill with me, a soft start battery drill (stupidly left at home) would have been much better! Anyway, it worked, and I then swapped over to a 10.5mm drill and pushed that up through. Doing it in two steps mean the final hole is almost a clean up, so should end up better formed than if you just rammed a 10.5mm straight through.

Then came another potential tricky bit..... tapping the hole. It is quite inset, so I had to get creative :

20220304_140419.jpg

(I apologise for the filth on the undercarriage, Somerset, what can I say?)

Tapped it *VERY* carefully, until it broke through the other side, success!

Loctite added to the new bolt, bush reassembled, added a nice thick subframe washer from Alex, and torqued it to 70nm + 90 degrees no problem at all

20220304_141432.jpg


Very, very pleased this worked out, and I am sure it will be helpful for someone in a similar position, could even be used for the rear subframe, if ever needed.

So that was the end of my day, a pretty successful one by all accounts, so well pleased.


Thanks to Mark for the PAS cooler again, and Alex for being speedy with his parts dispatch/delivery, owe you both one

[Bowie69]

Next on the list was a slightly bigger job, getting the radiator refitted....

Good news was the Behr one I ordered arrived in good time and I had checked it was the right one

This is the old one:

20220304_102249.jpg

Not bad eh?

Now the other side:

20220304_102256.jpg

Main problem was the bottom left was weeping, small patch when pressurised after a few minutes, I drove it like this for a long time though. You might be able to see that this has brass end tanks, and weighs about twice what the new one does, that has nylon/glass fibre end tanks instead, though it does still look well made, I will say, better than the Nissens rad I had before (as well as being wrong!). I think this was a Nissens rad, about 15 years ago, guess things have moved on since then.

Anyway, I built up the new rad:

20220304_102304.jpg
Gave everything a bit of a clean, used new fasteners where I could. Then set about putting the new thermostat seals in place, copper grease on the bolts of course.... refitting heater hoses, pipe, a straight silicone hose between the thermostat housing and the pipe, reconnected the block breather and made sure all the wires were put back where they should be. End result looked something like this:

20220304_125001.jpg

You can also see in this picture the very lovely and leak-free PAS cooler pipe, thanks again Mark

All clips where replaced with Mikalor stainless and after running it up to temp and topping it up a few times it was confirmed to have no leaks -bonus!

However, never to be without some drama, the bottom radiator mount decided to part company from it's metal surroundings.... doh. The parts book is useless here, and I had ordered one, but not realised that it wasn't quite right, about 30mm too short.

So, as a temp solution I had to cobble something together, started making this:

20220304_121200.jpg

Used the not-quite-right rubber mount and a couple of nuts, and a bolt from underneath:


20220304_121718.jpg

Not even close to being good, let alone perfect, but it is very well held for the moment. Will replace when I can source a proper one from somewhere.

Hopefully that is the last time I open the cooling system for a while

A lesson learnt on this job, if you are taking the radiator out, just drain the PAS fluid and remove the cooler beforehand, it will save you time and money.

[Bowie69]

Well today has been a busy one..... one-man cardboard box generator:

20220304_131014.jpg

Started at ~8am and worked until 3, at a pretty good pace, no great troubles this time (like incorrect parts...).

First job was to reattach the LH gearbox mount, fill it with oil, and refit the drive shaft, all went to plan, always nice using new fasteners, as well as new tools:

Screenshot 2022-03-04 at 21.24.15.jpg

This seemed like good value to me, impact rated so likely a bit harder than my original tools, and has a nice slim bit, meaning the CV boot won't get in the way as much....Screenshot 2022-03-04 at 21.24.06.jpg

Also picked up an impact rated wobble/universal ball joint, I figured this would allow me much better access to getting things done up.

Both worked very well, was able to use a 1/2" ratchet through the driveshaft hole (shield removed) to do them all up very quickly.

So that was first job off the list.... reason for all that was to get the speedo working again after nearly a year(!)

On a test drive later it was proven to work, so cross that one off the list!

[Bowie69]

Radiator, spline tool, subframe bolts and gear oil all arrive, game on Friday...

[Bowie69]

PAS pipe arrived (thanks Mike!), as has PAS fluid, CV bolts and new seal for thermostat.

Radiator, gear oil and spline bit arriving tomorrow, and in even better news, Eurocarparts said to just take the incorrect radiator back one of their stores for a refund, excellent

Hoses.... im going to replace the thermostat to rail with silicone, however the others are going to wait, will have to bodge, I mean be creative with the one that looks very close to failure...

Perhaps will get this all back together on Friday, will see, quite a bit of work.... apologies if I don't get snaps of stuff!

[Bowie69]

Thanks Mikes2 , that confirms the size, as mine are all the same, props, driveshafts etc.

[Mikes2]

also called XZN. fronts can be M8 or M10 for different cars. rears are usually M8

[Tractor Dave]

Teng tools are awesome

My collection of Teng tools is growing

[newsh]

Teng tools are awesome

[Bowie69]

Thanks Dave

[Tractor Dave]

Knowledgable peeps.... the CV joint spline tool, could someone confirm it is triple square M8/8mm ?

Mine is a little worn out and would like to replace with one good one, rather than a whole set of substandard ones.

Any recommendations also welcome

Thanks

It's called multi spline. I thought my front were m10. I have a set, think I got it in screwfix. Not expensive and lasting fine. I think they are Teng.
I'm sure more expensive makes would be longer lasting but these are fine for my needs.

[Bowie69]

Knowledgable peeps.... the CV joint spline tool, could someone confirm it is triple square M8/8mm ?

Mine is a little worn out and would like to replace with one good one, rather than a whole set of substandard ones.

Any recommendations also welcome

Thanks

[Bowie69]

WELL, time to get out of the '54 moggy traveller, and back into the coupe....

So the radiator had begun weeping a last year, and started to leave a very small patch on the ground, so I had ordered a new radiator in the autumn ready to do a proper flush and replace it.

Flushed the system with oxalic acid and then the hose until clean water came out of everywhere, and then pulled the old radiator out.

Breaking the PAS cooler pipe in the process, though I'm somewhat suspicious that it was already weeping, and my leaning on it just opened up the existing crack:

20220227_144337.jpg
As you can see there and noted in my wanted post the pipe appears to be made in two or three parts, and brazed, or some other method of joining them together, the joint to the corrugated part has come away.

I have a replacement coming, however if these can be rescued, I'd be quite tempted to do so, especially after being described as 'unicorn poo'

Still, I could crack on with other things, and did....

I replaced the coolant stub coming out of the thermostat housing, it looked quite worse for wear:

20220227_141543.jpg

Little tricky to get out, as the suggestion was that you could knock it out from inside the stat housing, this was tricky, with quite a bit in the way still like PAS pump, eventually I gave the stub a whack with a hammer on the exposed stub, and it loosened it enough so I could then easily tap it out from inside with a punch, where previously it refused to budge.

20220227_141433.jpg


New one on the right is one of @error404's from ultraperformance which made a LOT of sense to fit at this point. It tapped in with some difficulty (mostly access) but looks lovely.

Slight rust pool is due to me leaving it a week after flushing, it will get flushed again before refilling with new coolant.

Then on to fitting the new radiator, I unboxed it ready to fit the new fan only yo find they had sent the wrong one. ARGH. Eurocarparts fail. Sigh, have started return, but not holding out hope they will honour as I bought it end of Sept, but will see.

So, things a little on hold at the moment, have a new Behr radiator coming from Ebay, my old one was Nissens, but lasted 15 years, so not a bad innings, gong to try Behr this time. Looks like plastic end tanks now? My Nissens was brass, I guess there is the option to re-core.... however the bottom mount managed to snap off when removing, so maybe not!

After that debacle I decided to get on with stuff I didn't need a radiator for, so whipped the LH front driveshaft off, pulled the gearbox flange and removed the side cover to replace the speedo pickup which I'd managed to fit the wrong way round last winter when I did the undercarriage rebuild. Went smoothly, annoyingly had to remove the gearbox mount as well, but wasn't too bad. New CV bolts on their way as one got marred up, but will button it up, hopefully Friday when I get a full day on things

More to come....

[Bowie69]

Thanks chaps, had a bit of a forum hiatus over Christmas, busy time of year, but hopefully got some more updates in the coming months